Film Reviews: Brosnon stars in Love is all You Need

In her recent films, Oscar-winning Danish director Susanne Bier has meditated on the ability of the human spirit to endure all-consuming grief.Read

The Place beyond the Pines

The sins of fathers are revisited upon the sons in Derek Cianfrance’s doom-laden triptych, which reunites the award-winning writer-director with his Blue Valentine star, Ryan Gosling.Read

The Odd Life of Timothy Green

The Odd Life Of Timothy Green is a heartfelt and occasionally cloying fable that asks you to buy into its fantastical premise without any intention of tethering the underlying themes of parenthood and selflessness to reality.Read

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Any film which tantalises audiences with a superlative in the title needs to deliver on the promise. It’s A Wonderful Life was sublime and Pixar met expectations with the computer-animated antics of The Incredibles.Read

Oz: The Great and Powerful

Made in 1939 for the then staggering sum of $3.7m, The Wizard Of Oz failed to cast a spell over audiences on its initial release. More than 70 years later, Victor Fleming’s fantastical yarn is one of the most beloved family films in the cinematic pantheon and a staple of the Christmas television schedules.Read

Cloud Atlas

Big has always been beautiful to Lana and Andy Wachowski, writer-directors of the visually stunning Matrix trilogy. The first instalment of their epic science-fiction saga pushed the boundaries of digital trickery and introduced the slow-motion ‘bullet time’ effect, which has been copied countless times.Read

This is 40

Since the release of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, in which Steve Carell famously had his chest waxed on camera, writer-director Judd Apatow has become synonymous with rumbustious yet touching comedies which explore the foibles of the human condition.Read

Wreck-It Ralph

Video games based on films allow audiences to put themselves in the thick of the action from their favourite Hollywood blockbusters and animated features. It’s a marriage made in merchandising heaven.Read

Flight

Denzel Washington soars to career highs in Robert Zemeckis’s emotionally-wrought character study of an airplane pilot wrestling with alcohol dependency.Read

Les Miserables

Tom Hooper, Oscar-winning director of The King’s Speech, dreamed a dream of immortalising Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil’s powerhouse musical without the conventional safety net of lip-synching.Read

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

There is a moment early in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when Gandalf The Grey (Sir Ian McKellen) turns to diminutive hero Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and counsels: “All good stories deserve embellishment.”Read

Seven psychopaths

A Hollywood screenwriter with crippling creative block finds inspiration in the most unlikely places in Martin McDonagh’s twisted black comedy that builds on the promise of In Bruges. Like that impressive 2008 debut, Seven Psychopaths balances giggles, gore and giddiness, spattering the screen with lashings of crimson blood.Read

Rise of the Guardians

Many of the benevolent icons of childhood innocence are the universally adored faces of capitalism and greed. Father Christmas rewards well-behaved children with expensive gifts, the Tooth Fairy marks the loss of an incisor with money under the pillow and the Easter Bunny reduces an important Christian festival to a carnival of cocoa-smothered excess.Read

Local bands jam for charity

THE MUSICAL talent of Bucks was on show recently as local bands and musicians took to the stage to raise money for charity.Read

Gambit

Michael Hoffman’s remake of the 1966 screwball caper about a cat burglar and showgirl who plan an elaborate heist has impeccable credentials. Screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen have Oscars on the mantelpiece for Fargo and No Country For Old Men, while leading man Colin Firth deservedly collected a golden statuette for his exemplary work in The King’s Speech.Read

Argo - Stanger than fiction

Fiction could not be any stranger than the truth in Argo, based on real-life events following the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in Tehran.Read

Skyfall - the best Bond by far

Time waits for no man, not even the suave and sharply attired 007. In the 50 years since Ian Fleming’s debonair secret agent introduced himself to Sylvia Trench at a card table in Dr No, global politics have changed beyond recognition.Read

Frankenweenie - an animated delight

The pain of losing a loved one leaves an indelible mark on the hardest heart. Frankenweenie is a charming and impeccably crafted stop-motion animation about a lonely boy who cannot bear the loss of his pet dog.Read

Ruby Sparks

Art imitates life imitates art in this delightfully offbeat romantic comedy, which ponders if the man or woman of your dreams is exactly that: a fantastical creation. Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who collected a mantelpiece of awards for Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks stars real-life couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan as lovebirds magically brought together by unseen forces.Read

Taken

You’re never too old in Hollywood for a big screen renaissance. John Travolta’s 40th birthday was very happy indeed – he celebrated an Oscar nomination for Pulp Fiction. At the tender age of 56, striking Irish actor Liam Neeson unexpectedly reinvigorated his career as a tough-talking action man in the testosterone-fuelled thriller Taken.Read

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